Jeff Poor

On Monday’s “Special Report” on Fox News Channel, Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer railed against President Barack Obama, who earlier in the day in Tanzania downplayed the United States’ role in the Egypt where massive protests are threatening the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled government run by Mohamed Morsi.

The tack Obama is taking is 180 degrees from the position he took with its 2011 revolution, according to Krauthammer.

“Obama is a bystander, again,” Krauthammer said. “Here are the Egyptians in the millions out on the street, trying to bring down an Islamic government, increasingly dictatorial, increasingly intolerant, arresting journalists and judges, trying to Islamicize the military and the people are saying no. And what does the president of the United States do? He takes a position of studied neutrality, says he is not supporting either side. And yet as you point out in the Mubarak revolution, he obviously strongly took the side of the people, he demanded that [Hosni] Mubarak had to go. He was not neutral.

“But this reminds me of the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009 when the same thing happened. Islamists, dictatorial government, the people out in the street, and they were shouting ‘Obama, Obama, are you with us or against us?’” Krauthammer continued. “And he took a position that was essentially supportive of the regime. And the reason was he wanted to negotiate a nuclear deal he thought he could do, and he didn’t want instability. That was a shameful episode. There’s also idea of national interest. Mubarak was pro-American. He was an ally of ours. He helped us in all kinds of ways. Obama worked against him. Morsi represents a movement which is essentially deeply anti-American, and deeply anti-democratic. And yet he is neutral on this. This is a shocking position for a president to take.”

Host Bret Baier pointed out that the Morsi government was elected, to which Krauthammer explained elections don’t always necessarily bestow legitimacy.

“We have a long history of dictatorial parties that get elected and then end elections,” Krauthammer said. “You had [Vladimir] Putin in Russia. [Adolf] Hitler is the greatest example, of course. [Hugo] Chávez, the Sandinistas. The list of these is long. The Brotherhood is not a democratic party. It’s not the British Labor, not the Democratic Party of America. It is a movement that has an ideology. Its allegiance is to Islam. And it was — in the short year it was in office, it ran through an Islamist extreme constitution with no compromise with anybody and was ruling dictatorially. I think for a president to pretend if elected once, you have the protection and support of the United States is a complete misunderstanding of what legitimacy is.”